Stars with street cred
QUESTION Has any busker been spotted on the street by a musician or producer and gone on to achieve fame?
DON PARTRIDGE was a busker, a wonderful example of the ‘one-man band’ whose music f eatured guitar, drum, cymbals, harmonica and kazoo, all hung about his person, with the latter two instruments supported on a special frame placed close to his mouth.
Partridge was discovered busking in London’s Berwick Street market by producer Don Paul. He won a recording contract with Columbia Records and his first single, Rosie, reached no 4 in the UK pop charts in March 1968.
He then switched from busking to become a more conventional stage performer and appeared in shows alongside many artists and groups of the time including Status Quo. His second single, Blue Eyes, reached no 3 in the UK charts in June 1968.
Although his music never again achieved chart success, he continued to make a good living as a professional musician including concerts, album releases, plus supporting other well-known musicians and working for long periods in America.
He returned to the UK and settled on the South coast, where he died in 2010 aged 68.
David Marks, orpington, Kent.
ROD STEWART was in his teens when he was inspired to busk with Raymond ‘Wizz’ Jones on the streets of Soho and Paris; Wizz on guitar, Rod on harmonica. (Wizz is still recording and touring today, aged 76.)
in 1962, 6ft 7in bluesman Long John Baldry spotted Stewart when he heard him singing at Twickenham Station in South-West London and offered him the chance to join his band, the Hoochie Coochie Men.
According to Stewart: ‘i was 18 and playing harmonica and singing a Muddy Waters song in a railway station when Long John Baldry ran over to me from the other side of the tracks. i had just been to see him play at a club. He was one of the top bluesmen in England.
‘But John didn’t sing Muddy Waters songs — he knew Muddy Waters, had performed with him and with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott too. And now he was asking: “Would you like to join the band?”’
Baldry later described how Rod was a shy performer ‘apart from when he was tracking down tarts, he wasn’t so shy then’. Baldry went on to have a no 1 hit single with Let The Heartaches Begin. He also gave Sir Elton John his first break in music when he used Elton’s piano skills in his backing band, Bluesology.
Jane Brooks, Potters Bar, Herts.
QUESTION How many satellites are now orbiting the Earth, both working and defunct? Who owns them? Can anyone put one there? Are they becoming a danger?
According to the Un Office for Outer Space Affairs ( Unoosa) satellite database, as of August 2015 there were 4,077 satellites orbiting the Earth, 1,305 of them active and 2,772 defunct.
More than half of active satellites are for communications, 333 for Earth observation, 141 technology demonstration missions, 91 for navigation and the other 5 per cent for space research.
Commercial users account for 52 per cent of the satellites, governments control 30 per cent, 27 per cent are military and 8 per cent are civilian. (This adds up to more than 100 per cent because some satellites have multiple purposes/users).
The U.S. is the biggest operator of active satellites with more than 549 in orbit, followed by China’s 142 and Russia’s 131. Britain has 40 satellites, plus a share in the 26 European Space Agency (ESA) ones.
The largest commercial satellite constellation belongs to iridium Communications which has 70 in orbit. Globalstar operates the second-largest private constellation of 46 satellites.
The most satellites primarily used for government or military purposes belong to the U.S., China and Russia. The U.S. manages 154, the Russian MoD 80 and China’s People’s Liberation Army 52.
Depending on a satellite’s purpose, it may be launched into one of several types of orbit. The hottest piece of real estate is geostationary orbit. Satellites in these orbits circle the Earth in the same direction, at an altitude of 22,240 miles because that produces an orbital period equal to the period of rotation of the Earth (23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.09 seconds).
These satellites must be located near the equator since at this latitude, there’s a constant force of gravity from all directions. These orbits are used for communication satellites. The requirement to space these satellites apart means that there is a limited number of orbital ‘slots’.
For a satellite to be put in this zone, it must be allocated as lot by the international Telecommunication Union (iTU) allocation mechanism, but no space is owned by a country. Anyone can launch a satellite if they have the equipment, and there is a growing market in homemade satellites.
There are many more artificial objects orbiting the Earth. According to the U.S. Space Surveillance network, there are more than 21,000 objects larger than 10cm in orbit, and, it’s estimated, a further 500,000 bits and pieces between 1cm and 10cm in size.
Most debris is not a direct threat to Earth. it burns up in the atmosphere, though larger objects can reach the ground intact. According to NASA, on average a single piece of debris has fallen back to Earth each day, but as yet there has been no significant damage.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.
QUESTION When the boilers of ships such as the Titanic were heated by coal, did the stokers and firemen have a problem with the lung disease pneumoconiosis?
FURTHER to the earlier answers, in the course of research for my book Down Among The Black Gang: The World And Workplace Of RMS Titanic’s Stokers, i tried to convey the harsh and spartan working conditions and the hostile environment of stokers — or, more correctly, firemen — in the dust-laden boiler rooms.
Trimmers shifting coal in the ship’s bunkers also suffered from ingestion of coal dust. it is logical to assume that in the course of long exposure to these elements they would, like coalminers, suffer from respiratory problems such as silicosis and pneumoconiosis.
As a previous correspondent who was once a fire man highlighted, no one would stoke a boiler furnace stripped to the waist (this was an urban myth), as they would be exposed to intense heat, causing burns.
Other ailments firemen suffered from were back problems such as lumbago, sciatica or a slipped disc.
Strange as it might seem, no known photographs of the engine and boiler rooms, with machinery in place, of the Titanic and her two sister ships exist; none even of firemen or trimmers at work in their boiler rooms and stokeholds.
Richard de Kerbrech, Gurnard, Isle of Wight.